Together
by IncessantOblivion
Summary: This story takes place after the Season 2 finale. Five months after Clarke walked away from Camp Jaha Bellamy Blake goes out into the forest in search of a missing member of the remaining 100, but finds Clarke instead.
1. May We Meet Again

**A/N: "Together" is set five months after the Season 2 finale. It follows the canon of the TV series with one exception.**

 **In the series, there is a sequence towards the end of Season 2 in which Clarke and Lexa are chased by a mutated gorilla and Major Byrne is killed. For the sake of my story, this occurrence never happened; the gorilla doesn't exist and Major Byrne is alive.**

 **I always thought that gorilla was silly anyway.**

* * *

 _Chapter 1: May We Meet Again_

"May we meet again."

As soon as the whispered words left Bellamy's mouth he felt a veil of familiar numbness settle upon him and took his first steps towards Camp Jaha. It was the same veil that had settled upon him the day Octavia had been taken from him on the Ark. The numbness had come with the knowledge that there had been absolutely nothing he could do to get her back, so absolute was her imprisonment. It had taken the place of overwhelming despair, allowed him to live each day until he'd been given the opportunity to act.

Now, Clarke was gone. She had walked out of his life – perhaps for good – and he knew as surely now as he did that day on the Ark that there was absolutely nothing he could do. After all she'd been through and after all she'd done he was not going to force her to be somewhere she didn't want to be, even though he was sorely tempted to throw her over his shoulder and lock her up until she changed her mind. He could never do that to her. He was not her Chancellor, or her leader, or her mother, not someone who had a reason to love her so much to be selfish about it. He was her partner, her equal, her friend. He had too much respect for her and their relationship thus far to detain her against her will, just so he'd feel better.

And if the numbness didn't fill the awful, aching hollow in his chest that had been carved out by despair? Well, he'd just have to live with that, just as he lived with everything else that had happened to him, as he lived with everything he'd done.

As the gates of Camp Jaha closed behind him he allowed himself to look back, but there were no flashes of blonde and strength and sunlight to be seen, just a sea of green and darkness that Clarke was now lost in, and they might never meet again.

* * *

 _Five months later…_

Bellamy wiped the sweat off his face with the bottom of his worn grey t-shirt as he jogged through the forest towards Camp Jaha. He was late for the meeting with the Council and that was definitely not the right impression to make if he wanted them to take him seriously. He'd been stalking a particularly agile doe and the time had gotten away from him. What made matters worse was that he was not even supposed to be outside the camp in the first place, despite the fact he'd been sneaking out for almost 4 months now to hunt, to scout, to map the area, to just get away and not be Bellamy Blake for a few hours.

It had all started month or so after the Massacre of Mouth Weather. He refused to call it anything else, even though everyone insisted on referring to it as 'The Mount Weather Liberation.' Pretty language could not disguise what he – and Clarke – had done and he wouldn't dishonor the innocent people whose lives he'd taken by making it out to be something it wasn't, something better. Sure, they'd rescued the 44 – his people – but at the cost of hundreds. And they weren't the only deaths that weighed on him, something that Octavia knew all too well, so for his twenty-fourth birthday she had arranged with Raven and Wick to make him a device that turned off Raven's Gate without needing her help to do so. Octavia had given him a gift beyond price, something she'd done so many times, including the day she'd been born. The only condition was that he let either her, Lincoln, or Raven know when he was leaving and when he would be back. It was a fair condition – they knew all too well the kinds of ills that could befall someone alone out there and the cost in lives and blood to those who went to find them.

He finally came upon the camp and waited impatiently as the guard stationed on this section of the wall passed by. After doing this many times before, he knew he had precisely twelve seconds to run across the clearing and to the fence and another five to slip through it before the guard turned around and walked back in his direction. The military precision – and therefore predictability – of the watches was an area of weakness that the Guard, still too used to the strictures of the Ark, overlooked. As a fellow member of the Guard he would point it out to them if the time ever came that they were under threat again, but there would have to be Grounders within fifty miles of them before he'd give up his excursions into the forest.

When the time came he ran across the clearing and pressed that wonderful red button on his device to turn off the electricity in the section of the wall they called Raven's Gate. As always, he tested the wall with a stick before going through, hoping that today of all days would not be the day Raven's device failed him. Upon giving it to him she had warned him the device had a lifespan and testing the wall every time he went in and out would save his life one day. Having learned over the past year of life on the ground how much he really wanted to live despite everything , he never failed to take that precaution.

Fortunately the Gate was dead so he slipped through then around what Raven and Octavia annoyingly called 'Bellamy's Ark' since he'd taken to slipping out from behind it. Despite his distaste for the name, that large, curved piece of metal had served them well over the months since joining Camp Jaha. Not only was it the shield that prevented the rest of Camp Jaha from seeing his movements in and out of camp, it was the unofficial place any of the 44 knew to leave a message if they needed his help with anything.

The first few days after the Massacre of Mouth Weather had been sheer mayhem as families reunited, the dead were accounted for, mourned and buried, and as news of Clarke's defection spread throughout the camp, stunning pretty much everyone who had seen her in action and assumed, wrongly, that she was invincible or would take the mantle of leadership from her mother's shoulders. It had not disappointed any group of people more than it had disappointed the survivors of the original 100. They had wanted desperately to thank Clarke for what she'd done for them, the lengths she'd gone to, but he had not had the heart to tell them it was because of that she'd left.

That left only him for them to turn to. Despite their joy at being safe again and, for some, being reunited with family, all were unsure of their position in Camp Jaha. Under the Exodus Charter prisoners were to be re-trialed and given either hard work duty, more imprisonment, lashes or death as the punishment for their crimes on the Ark. He had been the one each of the remaining 44 had relied on to plead their cases with the newly-formed Council. He had been the one to point out that surely they had all served their penance by being sent down to the ground in the first place. Fortunately, the Chancellor, despite whatever resentment she held towards him for letting her daughter go, saw logic when it was presented to her and agreed that the surviving 44 had served their penance and would be integrated into the rotating work roster like all the other citizens of Camp Jaha.

Still, if any of the 44 found themselves under the command of an unfair or prejudiced supervisor or encountered any problems with any of the other citizens of Camp Jaha they still turned to him for help. As part of the Guard he was not always the easiest person to get to so with the help of Raven and Wick he fashioned metal badges of the initials of each of the 44. He gave the badges to them under the guise of a present – recognition for all they'd survived – with the secret instructions to leave their badge at Bellamy's Ark, which he checked every day, if they needed help and he would find them. His position as a Sergeant gave him some measure of authority to both find the person in need and help them with their situation.

Sometimes all one of the 44 needed was someone to talk to about everything that had happened, everything they'd survived, the friends or family they'd lost. And he did that for them too, even though he ached every day for the one person who'd been able to provide that same service to him.

Bellamy slipped around the wall and hurriedly strode towards the Ark across the clearing, hoping no one would interrupt his progress.

No such luck.

"Bell!"

Bellamy halted at the familiar voice of his sister. "This had better be important, O. You know I'm supposed to be meeting with the Council now."

Octavia stepped in front of him. "I know, but this is important. Jasper didn't report for kitchen duty an hour ago and no one has been able to find him. I'm worried. You know what happened last time he went missing."

Bellamy did. The boy would have the scars on his wrists forever to remind everyone of it. "Okay, try to contact as many of the 44 as you can – discreetly pull some off duty if you have to – and organize a search. I'm assuming you've checked all his usual places?"

Octavia huffed in impatience. "Of course."

"So now we have to check everywhere else. I'll meet up with you as soon as I get out of the meeting, but I can't miss this one. You know that."

"I know," Octavia replied softly in understanding, "but what if he's not in the camp, Bell?" She seemed reluctant to give voice to the fear. He understood that all too well. Sometimes giving voice to the fear made it real.

He put his hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes. "We'll find him."

Octavia drew in a steadying breath before replying. "Okay. I'll get the search organized."

With a nod of acknowledgement, Bellamy continued his course towards the Council's meeting room. He firmly pushed the matter of Jasper aside, despite his worry for the boy. He had more than one life for which he was responsible and for the sake of those lives he needed to focus on the matter at hand.

As always.

* * *

Abby remained carefully expressionless as Bellamy Blake strode into the Council Room, face covered in sweat and lined with exhaustion. But that was not unusual for Bellamy – he was always moving, always doing something, fixing something, helping someone. He couldn't have slept more than four hours a night and she'd not once seen him truly smile. This was a young man with the great weight of lives resting on his shoulders, a burden she understood all too well. It was why she was inclined to trust him – trust his intentions – despite the fact she just couldn't seem to bring herself to like him.

"Bellamy, you're late," she stated, even though it was obvious. "Sit."

Bellamy sat. "I apologize, Chancellor." He looked at the others sitting at the table. "Councilors."

"It was you who requested this meeting, Mr. Blake," Marcus Kane stated as he looked over Bellamy dispassionately.

"I know," Bellamy replied simply. He was never one to pander to authorities, something Abby appreciated. They had no room nor need for politics down here.

"And you are out of uniform, Sergeant," Major Byrne stated. "I assume you have a good reason for your state of dress."

Abby hardly thought it important if Bellamy was in his uniform or in cargo pants and a gray shirt that had seen better days, but didn't say as much. If Bellamy was going to fulfill the role she wanted him to he needed to gain the respect and trust of the Councilors on his own.

"I'm off-duty," he replied shortly before addressing the group as a whole. "Thanks to me we're already running late. Are we really going to waste more time discussing my wardrobe? Continue, by all means, but I won't take responsibility for it."

The corner of Abby's mouth twitched as she observed the other Councilors' distaste. The reasons they didn't want him here were the reasons she did. He was uncouth, unapologetic, blunt and challenging. He was exactly what they needed on the ground during this time of relative peace – the reminder that they still fought to survive, but this time it was against nature itself, not people.

"Then let's get straight to the reason why you wanted us here, Bellamy," Abby said.

Bellamy settled back in his chair and crossed his arms, his posture giving the appearance of ease, but Abby could see the hardness of his gaze.

"Winter has past and we survived it, but six people died of exposure."

"Six people out of over two hundred. That is not a staggering loss," Byrne cut in.

Bellamy pinned her with a hard stare, seemingly not at all concerned that he was directly challenging his superior. "Six people is six too many, especially when their deaths were preventable. I know that both on the Ark and on the ground hard decisions have had to be made and the leadership has had to weigh the cost of a few lives versus many. Despite what some of you think of me, I have had to make those decisions before and I did so out of necessity. But where was the necessity in these deaths? The one mistake we can make down here that will get us all killed is complacency. If we start seeing people as expendable because we've seen so much death already then we are not going to survive long. Six lives may seem inconsequential compared to the fifteen hundred that were lost on the Ark, or the three hundred that were lost in the bombing, but they're not. Just as each one of those lives mattered, so do each one of the lives at Camp Jaha. If we want to not only survive but thrive we need to start being proactive about the challenges we face here."

"So how do you suggest we do that, Mr. Blake?" Marcus asked.

"Firstly, those of us with experience surviving outside Camp Jaha teach everyone in the camp basic survival skills. I know Octavia and Lincoln have been giving lessons to the guards, but I'm talking about civilians here. You have a resource of 44 people whose knowledge is being wasted on scrubbing floors and peeling potatoes."

"44 kids, you mean," Byrne argued.

Bellamy leaned forward, not bothering to feign nonchalance anymore. "No, 44 _people_. It is a mistake to think that ability is relevant to age. Didn't Clarke prove that when she created the alliance with the Grounders and saved our people from under the mountain at the age of seventeen?"

Abby ignored the sharp pang of loss that stabbed her chest at the sound of Clarke's name. "And that alliance crumbled when Lexa betrayed her."

Bellamy looked at her steadily. "Lexa, the other leader you considered merely a child, betrayed Clarke for the sake of her people. I'm not saying I support her decision, but I do understand it. And after suffering that blow to her confidence, Clarke was the one who stayed at that mountain and did not leave until we were safe. She was the one who made the decisions no one else could or would. She is not a child, no more than any of the 44 of us who survived your best efforts to kill us."

Marucs gave Bellamy a hard look. "We made the decision we felt necessary at the time."

Bellamy held his gaze. "I know that, but what was the point if you don't utilize the tools you created." He looked back at Abby. "The 44 kids left from the 100 you originally sent down have developed the ability to survive here, especially in the forest. They are the ones who survived the Grounder's first attack on the drop ship. They not only know how to fight, they also know how to thrive in the forest. If the Grounders had not been an issue – as they are not now – a lot more of us would be left. We were an experiment that determined more than the Ark's ability to survive on the ground; we – a bunch of kids – figured out how to _live_. And if I learned one thing from all of this, it is that we should never take anything for granted."

"The people who are alive now may not be tomorrow or next week or next year," he continued. "The relative safety we experience now may not last beyond the month. We don't know where the Grounders went or whether they're coming back. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. Maybe something worse will take their place. _We don't know_ , so we have to be prepared for _everything_. The only way you can begin to do this is by teaching everyone how to fight, how to shoot, how to hunt, how to find their way through the forest, how to tell the time by the position of the sun, how to track, how to keep people alive when they've been injured, how to _live_ outside of these electric walls."

Marcus leaned forward in interest. "And how do you suggest we do that?"

"Let my 44 take small groups of people out into the forest. First on daily trips, then overnight as their skills grow. My 44 can teach everyone here, no matter what their age or ability, how to survive out there."

Major Byrne rubbed her chin in thought. "But what will that do to the current work roster? We barely have enough hands to keep everything running smoothly as it is."

Bellamy briefly closed his eyes in what appeared to be frustration. "Yes, but right now we are just surviving, we are not thriving. If we do not thrive, if we do not get ahead of whatever is going to come our way next, then our people have no future. Five months ago Jaha wanted to lead our people out of the camp and into the wilderness in search of a City of Light because we were under attack and we could not win. What if we had actually done that? Probably half of us would have died anyway because no one was prepared for what was out there. Let's not be caught so unaware and unprepared again. The day may come when we have to leave this place. Isn't it your duty as leaders to make sure your people can survive it when we do?"

"I see your point, Mr. Blake, but it will take some skillful readjustment of the rosters and a lot of double duties to accomplish what you suggest. We may have to start small – teach people how to shoot a gun, how to fight," Marcus said.

Major Byrne shook her head. "We could go back to the mountain to scrounge for more metal to make more bullets, but Wick and Monty are still working on a way to make more gunpowder with what we already found in Mount Weather, so we can't waste anything right now."

"That leads me to my second suggestion," Bellamy said. "We're wasting one of our biggest resources."

Abby raised an eyebrow in question. "Which is?"

"Mount Weather. Before we start tearing into the walls we should consider what those walls can do for us. We know from experience that it is not impenetrable, but it sure as hell is close. If Raven and Wick can get the turbines working again – which they assure me they are very capable of doing – that place will have electricity again. I'm not saying we should move there, but in the future as our numbers hopefully grow it can be a second base. In the meantime we can use it as shelter during winter and as a fortress if we are ever attacked again. It is the epicenter of this area; tunnels from all over lead there. We should claim them before something else does."

"What about what happened to our people there, and what happened to the people who lived there?" Abby asked. "Are our people, especially the 44, willing to go back there after everything?"

Bellamy shrugged. "They'd be stupid not to. Sometimes we don't have the option of emotion down here. And every one of those 44 is a survivor. They'll do what's necessary, as they have done since they landed here. As you should do, too."

Major Byrne opened her mouth to probably argue with Bellamy, to say they _had_ done everything necessary too, but Abby knew they could be doing more so she cut Byrne off with a pointed look.

"Thank you, Bellamy. You've given us a lot to discuss. You may leave."

Bellamy stood and met each of them by the eye before saying, "Thank you for taking the time to listen."

A wry smile touched Abby's lips. Well, it seemed even he could mind his manners and show a little respect – however empty – if he thought it might help his cause.

After he left, she looked to her two Councilors. "What do you think?"

Major Byrne spoke first, as she'd anticipated. "He makes a few interesting points, but is all that really necessary? I concede he has a good idea about rehabilitating Mount Weather for our use, but training up civilians to fight? That's what the Guard is for."

"And the Guard can die, just like the rest of us," Marcus replied. "In fact, weren't the Guard's numbers severely depleted after the events of Mount Weather?"

"So we will open the Guard up for application and train those who meet the standard, as we have always done," Byrne responded quickly.

"That's just the thing, isn't it?" Abby weighed in. "Should we do things as we have always done? We are not on the Ark anymore and the challenges we face here are not the same ones we faced there. The Charter was written with the assumption that there was no life on Earth, so it does not cover all the challenges we actually face. We have already changed our stance on the punishment system, so why can't we do the same in other areas?"

"Those laws are what kept us alive!" Byrne argued, "They are what still keep us alive!"

"Not all of us," Marcus added thoughtfully. "That's what Bellamy was really getting at. Yes, they have kept most of us alive, but not everyone. He was right; those six deaths were preventable and more unnecessary deaths like that can be prevented."

"And you're saying he's the one who knows how to do that?" Byrne scoffed.

Marcus shrugged slowly. "Well, he at least has some very good ideas. Abby?"

Abby leaned forward. "I agree with the both of you on different points. No, I don't think we should completely throw out the Exodus Charter and start again but we do need to be able to be flexible. We use the Charter as the baseline and deviate where the circumstances call for it. As for Bellamy's ideas, Kane is right in that they are good ideas, but Byrne is also right in that they will be difficult to execute. But we will at least make a start. Firstly, I will reassign Raven to work on Mount Weather's turbines, with Wick's assistance where needed. Monty has shown an extraordinary amount of promise with tech and I believe he can pick up the slack in mechanics as well. Raven has set things up so that all we really need is maintenance of our existing systems and she would only be a radio call away should we need her."

"As for Bellamy's idea of training up the civilian population in survival techniques, I believe we can make a good start by initially using volunteers to go outside the camp in their free time. We can get feedback from those who go and decide then if we want to take it any further by making it mandatory. Obviously if we make it mandatory we will face a whole new set of challenges, so let's just focus on the next step. To that effect, I propose we take Bellamy off Guard duty and instigate him as the head of this undertaking."

"What?" Byrne exclaimed. "Chancellor, I understand the boy has had some good ideas and he is a good Guardsman, despite his shortcomings as a person, but is it really wise to give him such responsibility? Don't forget what put him on the ship with the 100 in the first place."

"I haven't forgotten, Major, and that is part of the reason why he needs this responsibility. If I have learned _anything_ during my time here it is not to underestimate these kids. Bellamy is a natural born leader and he will do anything to keep his people safe. Didn't he and Clarke prove that time and time again? It took me losing my daughter a second time to realize the extent of what they are willing to do to keep their people safe. These kids made decisions I never could have. They are a formidable force - _Bellamy_ is a formidable force - and here he is willing to trust us."

The Major shook her head. "Trust us? That shouldn't even be an issue. We are the Council, you his Chancellor."

"We lost his trust the day we sent his sister to the ground to die along with the rest of the 100," Marcus replied, "And that is the cost of our decision so yes, we must earn his trust. More importantly, once we earn his trust we earn the trust of the rest of the 44."

"Exactly!" Abby responded emphatically. "The 44's allegiance is not to us, but to him. If we reject his ideas do you really think that is going to stop him, stop them? They will train up whoever they can with or without our permission, so why waste this opportunity to get them to trust that we know what we're doing?"

"If Bellamy is really such a threat to our authority, then don't give him any! And if he breaks the law and does what he wants anyway, banish him as the law requires!" Byrne exclaimed.

Marcus shook his head. "To make an enemy of this young man would be a grave mistake. Like Abby said, he is a natural leader and if given the choice, I doubt many of the 44 would chose to stay behind if we banished him and I wouldn't be surprised if others followed him too, especially when he's right. We should not deny his ability for the sake of our pride. We are here for the sake of our people, for their survival, not because we deserve it."

"We make Bellamy an asset to this community. Imagine what he could do if he was as dedicated to the rest of us as he is to those 44." _As he was to my daughter_ , Abby added privately.

Byrne rubbed the back of her neck in defeat, "Okay, but I insist at least one of the Guard accompany him and any others he takes on his excursions out of the camp to report back to the Council directly, to ensure he is not taking advantage of his new-found autonomy."

Marcus smiled wryly. "To ensure he is not creating his own army, you mean."

Byrne met his gaze without humor. "If I have learned anything on the ground, it is not to underestimate anyone."

"A wise observation, Major," Abby replied. "So maybe we should rotate the Guards we send out with him because if Bellamy could gain my daughter's trust within a few weeks of landing on the ground, he can gain anyone's."

* * *

"Octavia, any sight of him?" Bellamy asked as soon as Octavia reached him.

Octavia grimaced and shook her head. "In the half hour you were with the Council we spread out and combed the whole camp. We're about to do it again, just to be sure. Either he really doesn't want to be found…"

"Or he's not here," Bellamy finished.

"Bell, what will we do if he's left? The law is-"

"I know what the law is." He cut her off as he wiped a hand over his face. If Jasper left the camp and it was discovered, he wouldn't be allowed back in. That was the law. He should know, he disobeyed it every chance he got.

Octavia grabbed his arm and pulled him into a more private alcove where they would not be so easily seen. "I know if he left it is the stupidest thing he could have ever done, but I feel like we owe him, Bell. He lost everything under that Mountain – Maya, the girl he loved, Monty, his best friend…"

"It was his decision to cut Monty out of his life. Clarke was the one who told him to set up the floor for eradiation. We were the ones who pulled that lever. He was just following orders. We-"

"Bore it so Monty wouldn't have to. I know, Bell, but that doesn't change how Jasper feels about it. I have been the only person he's talked to at all about any of it so I know and I can't think about what he'd do to himself if he's alone out there. We went through too much to lose one of our own like _this_."

"I know, O. I won't let him give up. I will find him, even if he's left the camp. If he doesn't show up tonight I'll leave first thing in the morning to look for him."

Octavia nodded once. "I'll come with you."

"No, you're needed here. You are the one they turn to when I'm not around. They still don't trust Linc fully and Raven has no interest in being a leader."

Octavia expelled an exasperated breath through her nose. "And you think I want to be considered a leader? I want to lead about as much as you do."

Bellamy smiled humorlessly, remembering a time he'd wanted nothing more, but that was before he knew the cost that came with the mantle. "But I do it anyway, because I'm needed, just as you will be for as long as I'm gone. Raven has too much on with everything she's doing for the camp, for us."

"Fine," Octavia sighed, accepting. "Speaking of the camp – how'd the meeting go?"

Bellamy smiled wryly. "About as well as we'd expected, but I think they'll at least go for the Mount Weather idea. It makes sense."

"It all makes sense. They're idiots if they don't use what we can offer. And we have the biggest asset of all in Linc. The Tree People have thrived here for decades. He can teach us to do the same. This hunk of metal isn't going to last forever," Octavia said as she banged the side of her fist against the metal wall they were standing against.

"I know, and we'll do what we have to no matter what they decide, but if we're going to do this the right way we need to give them a chance to make the right decisions." One side of his mouth lifted in a self-depreciating smile. "Believe it or not, I'd prefer _not_ to sneak around and break the law."

Octavia laughed, "I'll believe _that_ when I see it, big brother."

* * *

As soon as Bellamy finished the graveyard shift on the wall he'd had scheduled that evening he went back to his quarters to change into what he considered his fatigues – forest green pants, light brown long-sleeved shirt and the boots that had seen him through almost seven months on the ground. He took a few moments to wipe down his bare torso and face with the bowl of water and washcloth he kept there, not wanting to spend any time trekking down to the lake to wash fully. He could bathe once Jasper was back at Camp Jaha.

Eight-hour shifts of wall duty in the Guard with day excursions to hunt had left not an ounce of fat on his body. He had always been fit, but the ground had hardened every muscle, as it had done for most of the 44. Some had lost their edge during the months of captivity under the mountain and relative inactivity in Camp Jaha, but he knew he never would. He needed to use everything he had to his advantage if he was to survive everything out there on the ground. They only inhabited a small corner of the planet and they had already encountered dangerous beasts, hostile Grounders, crazed Reapers, and technology the likes of which they thought they'd never encounter on the ground. And if the Mountain Men had been able to wreak such havoc with their physical limitations, he couldn't even imagine what else could be out there. So if he was going to survive things like _that_ , he refused to be taken down by lack of stamina and a weak right arm.

With this in mind, he opened his backpack to ensure all his survival gear was accounted for – a thermal jacket in case he was caught out overnight, matches, a second spare knife, a flare, a small pot in case he needed to boil water over a fire, ammo, dry rations to last three days, a small med-kit, a tent and spare socks. He kept his automatic rifle, his hand gun and two knives on him at all times. It didn't matter if the Grounders had mysteriously cleared out and headed west five months ago – he wasn't ever going to take any chances about what may or may not be out there.

He had just exited his tent when he saw Lincoln walk towards him.

"Bellamy." Lincoln nodded in greeting. Bellamy nodded back. "Octavia told me you were heading out today to search for Jasper. How long do you think you'll be gone?"

"Fortunately today is my fortnightly scheduled day off, so I'll try to be back by nightfall. But don't start to worry until tomorrow midday when my next wall duty shift is."

"You have an eight-hour hunt-and-gather expedition starting at four tomorrow morning," Lincoln reminded him.

"Yes, but you're leading that one so if I'm not back you can make excuses for me," Bellamy replied wryly.

Lincoln shook his head slightly. "I will make the excuses if I have to but you know I must tread carefully here. Transgressions are not so easily pardoned when they are a Grounder's."

Bellamy put his hand on Lincoln's shoulder. "You know you're one of us now, Linc."

"Part of your band of 44, yes, but the only thing tying me to this place is your sister. I go where she goes."

"And hopefully she won't be going anywhere for a long time," Bellamy replied solemnly. "We need her here. _I_ need her." _Now that Clarke is gone_. It went unspoken, but Bellamy knew Lincoln understood the subtext.

"And that is why she _is_ here, Bellamy."

Bellamy nodded quickly. "Is that all? Do I have your permission to leave now?" he joked weakly.

"One more thing," Lincoln replied. "Where do you think you'll look?"

"Does it matter?"

"It does if I'm going to send out a search party for you if you're gone past midday tomorrow."

"Whatever you do, don't do that," Bellamy replied firmly. "We can't afford to be acting too far outside of the Council's orders right now. I have a flare. If you're really that worried, keep one of our people outside to keep an eye out for it. I promise I will set it off if I get into trouble."

"Which will get you into more trouble with the Council."

"It's a risk I'm willing to take. Me. No one else needs to get into trouble over this."

Lincoln nodded once in acceptance. "I will leave you to your journey then. Good luck."

Bellamy took Lincoln's offered forearm and clasped it as they looked at each other with mutual respect. "Thank you."

Five minutes later Bellamy was outside the camp and circling around the forested perimeter to the location they suspected Jasper had gone. Monty had been conducting some maintenance on a section of the fence the day before, causing it to be powered down during that period. Monty had said he hadn't seen Jasper near it, but it was the only lead they had; they couldn't think of any other way he could've left camp.

As Bellamy approached the area he saw signs someone or something had passed through there, but it was difficult for him to determine if it was human or animal. It was unlikely an animal had passed so close to the camp, so it must have been Jasper.

 _Damn it, kid_.

He understood the guy was going through a lot, but did he really think no one would come after him? Did he really think he wouldn't be missed if he just ran off? Like Octavia had said, they had gone through too much and lost too many for Jasper to go like this. It didn't matter if he planned to take his own life or just die from exposure or stupidity; Bellamy was not going to let him die so needlessly. He'd seen too many deaths – caused too many deaths – for him not to fight for this one life.

As he slowly trekked through the forest, trying to track what he saw, he wished for Finn's presence for the first time in a long time. He'd never really cared for the guy the way some of the others had, especially not the way Raven and Clarke had, but the guy had been one of them and he'd had a lot of useful skills, tracking being the foremost. Finn's was another pointless death, the result of his own recklessness and rage and Clarke now had to bear the weight of it, wherever she was.

His thoughts turned to Clarke for the first time in a long time as well. Her name flitted through his head somewhat frequently, in a sort of wish-she-was-here capacity, but he never stopped to truly think of her, of where she might be and what she might be doing. It wasn't that he tried not to think of her or didn't want to think of her; he just didn't have the time. When he was in Camp Jaha he always had something else on his mind, all the issues and problems of the 44 he had to deal with and all the issues and problems of the camp as a whole that he longed to fix. When he was hunting he was always too alert to think about anything other than that present moment. Even when he sneaked out for his solo excursions he was often too busy mapping terrain to think of the things that had occurred on it.

It was really only when he came across a particular landmark he recognized that he thought of her. Once he'd come across the grove near the landsite where Atom had died, where he'd first seen Clarke for what she was – strong, fearless – not the pampered, privileged princess he'd thought her to be. She'd done what he hadn't been able to do then and she had continued to do what most people hadn't been able to do, until she couldn't anymore. So then he'd decided to do that for her and that was what he was doing now. They were still a team even if he didn't know if she was even alive anymore.

Perhaps it was because his thoughts had turned so maudlin and resolutely towards her that, a few hours later, he saw the flash of gold out the corner of his eye. The mind played tricks, after all; showed the eye things that weren't really there. But then he heard the telltale crunch of a boot on half-melted snow.

His experiences hunting throughout winter and into spring taught him that animals, deer in particular, did not make that crunching sound. Only the human foot did as it set down, that rolling motion from heel to toe. This was no deer and he doubted it was Jasper, so close to camp.

 _Unless he's coming back._

Regardless, he crouched down, took his rifle from around his shoulder and waited silently. After an interminable amount of time he heard it again towards his left, about twenty feet away. As he shifted his gaze there he saw the unmistakable human shape of green and black and motion as an arrow was drawn back into a bow.

 _Grounder!_

Bellamy's instincts heightened and his adrenaline rushed as he stood up in place and aimed the rifle towards the Grounder.

"Put your weapon on the ground and surrender peacefully," he ordered. "I don't want to shoot you."

The Grounder stood, bow drawn back and ready to fire at him, and as he stared into a face painted with mud and dirt he realized the eyes gazing back at him were as familiar as his own.

And the hair falling around them was blonde.

His rifle dropped uselessly to his side.

"Clarke?"


	2. The Hiding Place

_Chapter 2: The Hiding Place_

Bellamy Blake stared as Clarke slowly lowered her bow. He stared as she smoothly slid her arrow back into her quiver. Then he stared some more. An army of Grounders could have rushed out of the forest to attack him and he would have been mowed down. A cloud of acid fog could have rolled through the trees and he would have been engulfed.

"Bellamy."

He hadn't thought he'd hear his name on her lips again. He'd given up all hope of seeing her again. He hadn't allowed himself to hope at all, because he knew the disappointment of it never happening would cripple him, something he couldn't afford to experience.

"What are you doing out here?" she asked with a familiar tone of annoyance in her voice.

 _That_ was all she had to say? He laughed shortly, humorlessly, and wiped his hand over what must be an incredulous expression on his face. Here he was wanting to run up to her and envelop her in his arms, just as she'd once done to him, and there she was calmly asking him why he was there like he was breaking some kind of law.

Well, he _was_ , but that was beside the point. It was as though she hadn't expected him to be there, and was annoyed that he was, but that didn't make sense.

"I could ask you the same question, Princess," he replied as he started making his way towards her. It would just be silly to have a conversation twenty feet away. It had absolutely nothing at all to do with him wanting her closer, wanting to see her closer, after five months apart.

As he got closer Clarke's expression didn't change - it was stony and cold and closed. He'd grown used to seeing her face in a constant state of flux, whether her expression was of exasperation - usually at him - sometimes sorrow, rarely joy, often pure determination. It wasn't just the outfit and the bow and arrow and the face paint that made her seem like a Grounder - it was her bearing, the guarded savagery of it.

That was when the answer to his mystery dawned on him. She hadn't been expecting him because she knew his routine. The only way she would know that is if she'd been watching his schedule at the camp for at least a fortnight. The only conclusion he could draw from those deductions was that she'd been in the area for a while.

He stopped just a foot away from her and tried to find a trace of the Clarke he knew in the familiar face covered in mud and dirt. He slung his rifle back over his shoulder then crossed his arms as he looked down at her.

"So, how long have you been back?"

One side of Clarke's mouth twitched up in a small half-smile and her eyes lightened marginally. She'd obviously been expecting him to call her out on it.

"Six weeks."

Bellamy's breath snagged despite his best efforts at control. _Six weeks?_ She'd been living within four hours of Camp Jaha for _six weeks_ and she hadn't thought to let anyone know? Let her mother know?

 _Let_ me _know?_ he thought as his stomach dropped.

Some of what he'd been thinking must have been evident on his face because she grimaced slightly. "I know, and I'm sorry! It's just..." she looked down at her feet.

"Just what?" Bellamy prodded as she hesitated, determined to get an answer out of her. He felt he deserved one.

She looked back up, her expression under control, though her eyes didn't meet his. "When I came back into the area I observed the camp for a while," she patted the binoculars hanging from her hip. "Everything seemed...fine, perfectly fine. It seems the camp didn't fare too badly over winter and things were running smoothly." She paused and met his eyes. "I saw you, either guarding the wall or slipping out from behind it, taking care of things as you've always done, and I figured I wasn't needed anymore, so why return?"

Bellamy drew in a deep breath before answering. "The camp may not need you, Clarke - the 44 may be safe now - but your mother needs you." _I need you,_ but he wouldn't say that. She didn't need to know that, especially since she so obviously didn't need him. Not anymore.

Clarke looked off to the side. "She doesn't need me, she loves me. I'm her daughter."

"Do you think she's the only one who loves you?" Bellamy said and her eyes flung back to his. "All those kids you helped save love you. Raven loves you, worries about you. Hell, even Octavia loves you even though she thinks she despises you half the time, but that's just how Octavia's mind works." He smiled in amusement. "I should know."

Clarke rewarded him with another little half-smile. "Thanks, Bellamy, but if it's all the same to you I'd prefer to stay out here. Alone."

Bellamy clamped down on the hurt that threatened to show in his eyes. "Your wish is my command, Princess," he replied somewhat sarcastically.

The familiar expression of exasperation surfaced on Clarke's face at his words. Bellamy bit back a smile of triumph. "Shove it, Bellamy. You want to know the truth?"

"I always do," he replied solemnly.

"I don't want to go back there because I know the second I step back through those gates two things will happen. Firstly, everyone will want an explanation, will want my reasons for leaving, reasons I'm not prepared to give to anyone."

"Anyone except me," Bellamy added.

"What?" Clarke looked up at him in confusion.

"You told me the reason, before you left. And you're telling me now."

Clarke waved her hand in dismissal. "Yes, but that's because it's you."

Bellamy bit back another smile of triumph.

"Secondly," Clarke said pointedly, moving on. "I know myself. As soon as I get back there I'm not going to be able to help but step back into the role I held before."

"Leader."

"Exactly," Clarke replied emphatically. "I don't want to lead anyone anymore, Bellamy. I can't."

Bellamy shrugged, his expression closed. "You wouldn't have to do it alone." And didn't that sound familiar.

Clarke's features softened. "I know," she replied quietly, "but I don't want to lead _at all_. Me staying out here is what's best for everyone."

Bellamy could tell she truly believed that. He could also take a pretty accurate guess at the reasons why she believed that. If anyone understood, it was him. And hell, he'd lasted this long without her help. Why stop now? Having Clarke around just made things easier for him, took some of the load off, but he'd done fine these past five months without her. He didn't really need her after all.

Mind made up, he subjected her to the full force of a lighthearted grin. "Alright, Princess, I'll keep your secret, but you have to give me something in return."

He could tell Clarke was really trying to not roll her eyes in response. He didn't bother to bite back his triumphant grin this time.

"Figures," she said dismissively. "Fine, what do you want?"

He leaned forward playfully and whispered, "I want to see your cave."

* * *

After Clarke had finished pretending not to be flustered by his, admittedly, weak double entendre, she merely spun around and stalked off. Obviously she expected him to follow, so he did, but he didn't do so quietly.

"So what have you been doing out here exactly?"

"Pretty much the same things you do when you come out here, really," Clarke replied without turning around. "I hunt, I set traps for food, I gather berries and herbs, I map the terrain, I carry water to my _cave,_ as you call it. Speaking of..." Clarke abruptly turned to her right.

Bellamy followed without question. "So you're the one who's been setting those traps, huh?"

"What do you mean?"

"Lincoln and I found a few empty ones and they had us baffled. He recognized them as ones used by the Grounders but they seemed recently used, despite your efforts to disguise them. We decided to put an extra Guard on each gathering expedition because of you."

"Sorry for the inconvenience," Clarke replied, not sounding sorry at all.

"Did you make them?"

"The traps? No. I scavenged the Grounder villages before I left the area, actually. I knew they were there so when I came back I decided to use them. It's where I found this bow, some arrows, the quiver and a few other handy things I took with me. I figured my gun would run out of bullets soon enough and I didn't want to be caught unarmed in an unfamiliar place."

Of course she didn't. That was Clarke, always prepared for the worst, always anticipating the next attack. Just like him.

"Do you know why they left?"

"No."

The abruptness of her answer told Bellamy two things: one, she knew more than she was letting on and two, she didn't want to talk about it. That was fine, he had time and more patience than anyone ever gave him credit for.

"So where'd you go?" Bellamy asked, changing the subject.

"I went east, initially, to the Dead Zone. Jaha said the City of Light was across it and I wanted to see if he was right, or if they'd died on the trek over. Besides, it seemed as good a place as any to spend the winter months."

Bellamy shook his head incredulously. "You spent over 3 months in a desert. Alone."

"More or less."

"And you _survived_? How?"

Just as he asked the question a familiar river came into view through the trees. It was where they'd always gone for water and bathing when they'd lived at the landsite, as it was free of the mutated snakes that traversed the waters, and was full of the mysterious healing red algae that had saved many lives on many occasions.

Clarke stepped through the trees and approached the water. She looked around a couple of times before setting her weapons down and kneeling before the water's edge. She turned back to look at him. "Tell you what; if you're ever planning to cross the Dead Zone I'll let you know how I did it."

Bellamy watched as she bent over and started washing the grime off her face, slowly revealing the peaches and cream skin that lay underneath.

"You know, if your idea was to camouflage yourself I suggest covering your hair next time. It's kind of a dead giveaway," he suggested casually as he reached into his pack and withdrew his flask of water.

Clarke gave him a small smile and he ignored the seeping warmth in his chest at the sight of it on her face now devoid of its dark mask. "I know, I usually have it tied up but it had gotten caught on a bush earlier today and completely unraveled. And despite all my time on the ground, I still hate being dirtier than I need to be. Have you ever tried washing dried mud out of tangled hair daily? It's not fun."

Bellamy smiled back. "Still a Princess, I see."

Her smile grew in response. "Oh yeah, totally." She laughed then, and it was the best thing Bellamy had heard in months. "Oh wow, I sound ridiculous." She shook her head in disbelief. "Come on, let's head off, if you're ready."

He'd been ready for five months now, but he opted to keep that thought to himself and merely nodded instead.

As they started off through the forest again, another question occurred to him. "So why did you come back?"

Clarke didn't answer at first. Judging by how cagey she'd been with information about the Dead Zone and the Grounders, he figured she was probably trying to decide out how much to tell him, if anything.

In the end she just shrugged and said, "As much as I tried to switch off the part of my brain that worried about you guys, I couldn't. Not completely. I needed to know how everyone did over winter. None of us had experienced it before." She paused. "Technically, I still haven't," she added wryly.

"We lost six people," Bellamy said abruptly.

Clarke spun around, eyes wide. "Anyone we know? I've been watching the camp almost every day, getting a sense of the routines, but I couldn't spot every one of our kids. It's kind of hard to see everyone when I'm not watching all the time."

Bellamy tried not to smile. _Our kids?_ She seemed to have forgotten she was the same age as most of their 'kids'. Then again, Clarke wasn't like anyone he'd ever met, much less a normal seventeen - or was she now eighteen? - year old.

"Relax, they're all fine. I made sure Lincoln taught them how to avoid frostbite and overexposure." He shook his head. "Unfortunately not everyone in the camp was able to suspend their prejudices against him long enough to learn how not to die," he added bitterly.

Clarke huffed in displeasure before turning around to keep walking. "Then they're idiots."

"Definitely, but we can't afford to lose anyone to stupidity or ignorance if we're all going to survive here longer than a few months."

"I agree. So what are you doing about it?" she asked.

Bellamy raised an eyebrow, even though she had her back to him. "What makes you think I'm doing anything about it?"

Clarke turned her head long enough to give him a knowing look without breaking her pace. Bellamy smiled in defeat. "I'm working through a few ideas with the Council, actually."

Clarke laughed out loud once again, but the laugh was derisive this time.

"What, you don't believe me?" Bellamy challenged.

"You mean believe that you, Bellamy Blake, anarchist and rebel who almost destroyed the 100 at one stage with his 'there-are-no-rules' motto, is working with the very same Council who he rebelled against? Yes, I am finding that very hard to believe."

"Well, I wouldn't say I almost _destroyed_ the 100..."

Clarke shot him another knowing look. Bellamy shrugged.

"Different Chancellor, different Council - mostly. Your mother is no Jaha. She may still be a little too stiff for my tastes - I now see where you get that from, by the way..."

A warning look now. Bellamy smiled.

"But she definitely has all of our survival in mind and she's not afraid to deviate from the path to ensure it."

"That path being the Exodus Charter," Clarke surmised.

"Yeah, though I suspect a lot of that has to do with her displeasure at being given ten lashes under the Charter when Kane was Chancellor."

Clarke spun around, causing Bellamy to almost run into her. " _What_? I didn't know that!"

"You had a lot on your plate at the time."

Clarke shook her head and drew in a deep breath before resuming her pace. "I guess it must have worked out for good in the end."

"You could say that. None of the 44 were penalized under the Charter. We were just integrated into the workforce with everyone else. I even got promoted to Sergeant."

"So that's why so many of the other Guards seem to obey your orders," Clarke mused. "I'd been wondering about that. It makes sense now."

"What, you didn't think they listened to me because of my charm and intellect?"

"No," Clarke replied resolutely.

"And why not?"

Clarke came to a stop and faced him with an amused look on her face. "Because neither of those things ever worked on me."

Bellamy fought to keep a grin off his face as he regarded her with wide eyes. "So you admit I have both those qualities?"

Clarke regarded him steadily, but he saw the amusement playing at the corners of her mouth. "I didn't say that."

"You wound me, Princess," Bellamy replied, feigning a hurt tone.

Clarke was fighting to keep a grin off her face at this point. "I doubt that," she replied sardonically before dropping down and wiping leaves off a hatch. "We're here."

Bellamy looked at the hatch and then at his surroundings. He really should have recognized where they were, where they'd been going, but then again he had been pretty distracted, what with Clarke appearing out of nowhere and all.

"You've been staying in the Bunker?" he asked disbelievingly.

Clarke wrenched the lid open without looking at him. "It's always safer underground," she replied sarcastically.

The irony, of course, being that it hadn't been safe for the inhabitants of Mount Weather. They went down without another word.

Bellamy looked around, the space seeming much the same as it had the last time he'd been there. He looked at the stain on the floor, now the dirty brown of old blood - the place Finn had shot an unarmed man in cold blood. Maybe if Bellamy had stopped him crossing that line then he could have prevented Finn from stepping further down the path of darkness that had ultimately led to his death.

And to a large portion of Clarke's suffering.

"When I came back here I was expecting a severely decomposed corpse to greet me," Clarke said into the silence, "but there wasn't one. Know anything about that?"

Bellamy shrugged in response and set his pack down on the floor in a corner near the ladder. The experience hadn't been pleasant as the corpse had been over a month old by the time he'd reached it, but it hadn't been a big deal either. He figured it was the least he could do after the man had been shot on his watch.

"I like what you've done with the place," Bellamy said as he walked around the space, pointedly changing the subject.

"Which is nothing at all," Clarke replied, her tone laced with light amusement.

A flash of color caught Bellamy's eye and he walked over the the small table behind the couch. "I wouldn't say nothing," he said as he fingered a beautiful drawing of the river they'd just come from.

He'd heard that Clarke was an artist, but he'd had no idea she was _this_ good. In another world, where beauty was valued over survival, she really could have been something else, something innocent and pure, but even in this drawing he saw the shades of darkness that only existed as the world turned into night. It said a lot about her, about what she'd been through and what she'd survived, that she hadn't drawn this in the full daylight.

Clarke rushed over and clamped her hand over the drawing before quickly turning it around so the blank side faced up. Fitting.

"That's private," she snapped.

"Then you shouldn't leave it out in plain sight," Bellamy retorted.

"I wasn't exactly expecting guests," Clarke replied testily.

Bellamy crossed his arms over his chest. "Well, you should from now on."

Clarke narrowed her eyes at him. "What do you mean?"

"Relax, Princess, I already told you I won't tell anyone about your little hideaway, but why shouldn't I come back for a visit every now and then?"

Clarke's chin tilted up and he recognized that steely look of determination on her face. "And _I_ told _you_ I want to be alone."

"And you will be, most of the time. You seem to know my schedule - you know how much free time I have, or lack of it. Don't worry, I won't be _bothering_ you often," Bellamy replied, trying to keep the annoyance he felt from his voice. They hadn't seen each other for five months and she was already trying to get rid of him? So much for believing they'd had some kind of friendship going before she'd left.

"Then why _bother_ me at all?" Clarke challenged.

"Because, we can help each other out," Bellamy replied smugly, even though the idea had just occurred to him. She didn't need to know he'd been thinking it'd be nice to just hang out, but it seemed Clarke still thought she was too good for that. _Princess, indeed._

"Go on," Clarke replied as she crossed her arms over her chest and eyed him warily.

"While there are quite a few supplies here, I suspect you could do with some of life's small luxuries, like batteries for your torch," he nodded towards the torch sitting on the desk, "and bullets for your gun," he nodded towards the rifle leaning against the wall.

"I don't need that gun anymore. In fact, you can take it back with you. It's too loud."

Not to be put off, Bellamy continued, hitting her where he knew it would hurt - her vanity. Going by that hair comment she'd made earlier, she still had a shred of it left. "Then what about a new shirt? I think that one used to be beige."

Her clean face allowed Bellamy to see the full extent of her blush this time. He didn't even try to stop his triumphant grin. Clarke narrowed her eyes at him again.

"What else you got, Blake?"

Bellamy looked around, considering. His eyes landed on her bow and arrow. "I assume you've taught yourself how to use that thing, but how good are you at hand-to-hand combat?"

"If you're about to offer me lessons, I'd have to answer with the same question."

Bellamy shrugged casually, "Linc has been giving me lessons five times a week for the past five months, so _my_ answer would have to be 'a hell of a lot better than you.'"

Clarke considered it for all of 2.5 seconds before sighing in defeat. "Fine, but what's in it for you?"

"Lessons for lessons."

Clarke shot him a questioning look.

"You're right, Princess. Bullets are loud," he said in response.

"You want to learn how to use a bow and arrow," she stated.

"I reckon you must be pretty good with it if you've managed to keep yourself well fed these past weeks." At her questioning glance he raked his gaze up and down her body. "You're not exactly looking like you're about to cross the Styx."

Clarke flushed again. "Fine. Deal. I'll be here next time you escape camp, but I want two things in return."

"Continue."

"Firstly, bring a new set of clothes the next time you come out. You're right too, Bellamy," she said with a small self-depreciating smile at his surprised look. "This shirt did used to be beige."

He smiled back. "Secondly?"

"Secondly, tell me what you're doing out here now. Unless I'm mistaken - which I'm usually not - you finished a Guard shift at eight this morning. You usually at least sleep a few hours before coming out on your day off."

Bellamy was about to say that he was flattered she'd paid such close attention to his movements when he suddenly recalled his reason for being out here in the first place.

"Shit! Jasper!"

He rushed back to his pack, but before he could pick it up Clarke was there with a hand on his arm. He couldn't help but look down at it, the first contact they'd had since she'd kissed his cheek goodbye five months ago. He met Clarke's eyes and he could tell she was thinking of that time as well by the way she removed her hand a second after. Some things were better not thought of.

"Bellamy, wait. Jasper's fine."

He cocked his head in question.

"I saw him racing through the forest yesterday. He wasn't exactly being subtle about it."

"And you followed him?" Bellamy asked, mind now completely focused on Jasper's well-being.

"Of course. I knew something had to be wrong because he wasn't paying attention to his surroundings at all. He knows better. So I followed him," she drew in a heavy breath, "all the way to Mount Weather."

Bellamy exhaled the breath he'd been holding. "Mount Weather."

"Yeah."

"Makes sense, now that I think about it." When Clarke raised her eyebrows at him, he continued. "He's not exactly been having the best time since that all went down. A couple of months ago he got drunk off some of Monty's moonshine and messed up his wrists a bit."

Clarke gasped. "Oh my god, I had no idea..."

"He didn't cut deep enough to do any real damage." He looked away as he thought of the darkness of that time. "I think it was more a cry for help than an actual death wish, but we've all kept a close eye on him since."

"Until he ran off yesterday."

Bellamy nodded. "Today was my first real opportunity to find him." He looked back to Clarke, who was looking down at the floor with worry etched all over her face. "So he's safe, you say? What do you think his state of mind was when you left him? Was he stable?"

Clarke met his eyes. "Yeah, he seemed okay. Not great, but certainly not suicidal. I followed him in and he just went straight to the dining room."

Where Maya had died. Of course.

"He wasn't crying or anything like that," Clarke continued. "In fact, he seemed pretty determined about something."

"Not determined about committing suicide, I hope," Bellamy muttered darkly.

Clarke shook her head slowly in thought. "No, definitely not that. I know what that looks like and it wasn't that."

Bellamy didn't want to know how she knew what that looked like - he really did _not_ want to go there right now, or maybe ever - so he decidedly moved on. "I should probably still go check on him."

"I saw him just over four hours ago. I was actually coming back from there when I ran into you. I think he'll hold for another few. Besides, maybe he just needed to get away too," she said with a too-casual shrug.

Bellamy decided to leave that one alone too. "I don't have much time on my hands. I've got hunting expedition shift tomorrow morning followed by wall duty and I would like to get a least a few hours sleep before I hit that double. If I'm going to go, I have to go now."

Clarke sighed, then said in a considering tone, "I have to go out to check my overnight traps, but that won't take long, thirty minutes tops."

Bellamy reached for his pack again. "I'll come with you."

"No, you should wait here. You haven't slept in, what, almost twenty-four hours, right? Just wait for me to get back before you head out again. Nap, eat something, whatever. Get some rest," she ordered, sounding very much like the bossy Clarke of old.

He was tempted to argue just to rile her up, but a sudden wave of exhaustion washed over him. Perhaps it was a good idea to take a short break. Still...

"Are you sure you don't want me to come with you?" he asked.

Clarke smiled as she picked up her bow and arrow. "Bellamy, I've spent the last five months alone. I think I can survive another thirty minutes."

 _Thanks for reminding me,_ Bellamy thought as he dropped down on the couch in defeat. "Fine, thirty minutes. Then I'm leaving."

"Okay, fine. See you soon," Clarke replied as she climbed up the ladder.

And Bellamy thought that sounded much nicer than 'May we meet again.'

* * *

Exactly twenty-eight minutes later Clarke returned to the hatch with a two quail slung over her shoulder. Not the best haul, but sufficient to last her a few days if she economized. She really should have left the traps out longer before checking and hiding them but Lincoln was due to take a hunting party out the next morning and she didn't know if they'd hit her area or not. Lincoln was not from the Ark, so he knew to mix it up so the animals wouldn't start to catch on to their hunting patterns. If only the Guards at the wall thought the same way. She'd have to mention it to Bellamy.

 _Bellamy._

Clarke shook her head clear as she quietly opened the hatch. Later. She'd think about him later, once she was alone again, once his presence no longer filled the spaces of the Bunker to the point of suffocation.

She expected a greeting as she descending the ladder, perhaps a sarcastic comment about keeping him waiting. Instead she was met with silence. As soon as her feet hit the floor she turned to face what she'd hoped to accomplish by leaving him there.

Sure enough, Bellamy was sprawled out over the couch, fast asleep. Clarke didn't bother to stop the grin that stretched her mouth wide in satisfaction. Bellamy Blake had been played.

The idea of him jogging another four hours to Mount Weather to check on Jasper then back other eight on approximately zero hours sleep before heading to a double shift was just preposterous. Despite what he seemed to think, he wasn't superhuman and regular humans needed regular rest if they wanted to remain functional. He'd be no help to anyone, much less Jasper, if he didn't get some sleep. That's what she reasoned, anyway. It wasn't because she was worried about him. Nope, not at all.

And it definitely wasn't because she'd watched him wear himself ragged over the six weeks she'd intermittently observed Camp Jaha. She also hadn't always specifically searched him out when she did so. It wasn't her fault he always seemed to be rushing about the place, never stopping but to talk to someone, usually Octavia, Lincoln, Raven or one of the 44. She would reluctantly admit to sometimes covertly observing some of his illegal excursions out of the camp, but it was only to make sure he didn't go anywhere near her cave, as he called it. It certainly wasn't because she didn't like the signs of exhaustion that lined a face that seemed too old for a man of twenty-three - or what he twenty-four now? Then again, she imagined she didn't look anywhere near seventeen. She didn't often look in the mirror she'd found here.

He didn't look so worn down now that his face was relaxed in sleep, she decided as she walked up to the couch. He looked rather a lot like the Bellamy she'd known when they'd first arrived in the drop ship, the reckless Bellamy who'd lived with abandon. Even while she'd raged at his irresponsibility she'd envied him his ability to take their circumstances with both hands and mold them to his will, along with the will of everyone around him, and have a damn good time while he did it. People had eventually listened to her because she'd been right on many occasions; they'd listened to him from the start because it was _him_. They had wanted to be him, to live like him. If she hadn't been so concerned with her own survival and the survival of everyone on the Ark she might have just eventually joined them in that desire.

She smiled at herself. Then again, maybe not. She'd never been able to compartmentalize like he did. That was why she was here and he was in Camp Jaha doing what she should be doing - keeping their people safe. She had gotten better at it during her time alone, but his presence was already blurring the lines between what she did and didn't want to think about. For that reason she couldn't decide if she wanted him to leave and never come back or stay. One thing was certain - staying was by far the more dangerous of the two, in many ways.

But as she reached out her hand to touch a surprisingly silky dark curl that tumbled over his forehead, she decided she didn't care.


	3. The Strangest Day

**A/N:**

 **Fun Fact #1: I wrote this overnight. You can tell how tired I was by the end of it by how many times I use the f-word.**

 **Fun Fact #2: Fun Fact #1 doubles as a language warning.**

 **Fun Fact #3: I still haven't slept.**

* * *

 _Chapter 3: The Strangest Day_

Bellamy wasn't used to waking up feeling well-rested. He'd made such a habit of functioning on a few hours' sleep that he wasn't quite sure what to do without the near-constant ache of fatigue behind his eyes. One thing he definitely knew to do was move the hell off whatever he was sleeping on; he wasn't too keen on replacing an aching head with an aching neck.

He sat up as his eyes focused on his different yet familiar surroundings. He also wasn't used to waking up and not knowing exactly where he was. He did, however, know this wasn't his tent. For starters, he didn't have a couch in his tent and he sure as hell never burned candles. The last place he'd seen candles was...

 _Clarke!_

He whirled around on the couch and sure enough, Clarke was sitting at the desk in the Bunker, her eyes solely focused on the piece of paper before them, the pencil in her hand moving in furious but sure strokes. So it hadn't been a dream after all. He really had found her yesterday; she really was here.

"Why do I feel like I've woken up in another century?" Bellamy croaked, his voice rough with sleep.

Clarke's eyes flung to his in surprise and he could've sworn he detected a mixture of guilt and embarrassment on her face. Her hand quickly covered whatever it was she'd been drawing and she attempted an easy smile, but it wasn't very convincing.

"Good evening to you too, Bellamy," she replied sarcastically.

"Good _evening_?" Shock jumpstarted his brain and he looked around, panicked. Yep, the Bunker was completely dark but for the single candle burning on Clarke's desk. He rubbed a hand over his eyes and suddenly felt tired again. "Fuck. I guess I was really asleep for a century."

"Close," Clarke replied with a touch of sympathy. "More like ten hours."

"Jesus," Bellamy groaned. Ten hours? There was no way in hell he'd be able to get to Mount Weather and back before his hunting shift the next morning, not to mention it'd be extremely irresponsible for him to go out on such a trek on his own overnight and he was supposed to be Mr. Responsibility now. Then again, Mr. Responsibility had promised to find Jasper and bring him back, so there was that to consider.

"Don't even think about it."

Bellamy's focus abruptly returned to Clarke. "What?"

"You're not going to Mount Weather tonight so stop thinking about it," Clarke replied casually as she picked up the knife on the desk and started whittling away at her pencil.

Bellamy didn't even bother to question how she knew what he'd been thinking - anyone who knew him even remotely would have known he'd been thinking that. "Only if you stop thinking you can stop me."

"Only if you stop being an idiot," she retorted testily as she put her knife down with a clang. "Even I don't go up that way overnight. There are animals that live up there that rule the night and the only reason they don't come down this way is because these are the Camp's hunting grounds and together you guys are the bigger predator. There's a reason I chose the Bunker as my base instead of any of the old Grounder villages or tunnels, which would have been preferable to this place." She looked pointedly at the brown stain on the concrete floor.

He got it. She had memories here - some he knew of, probably more he didn't - and she lived among them by necessity, not choice.

"Then why didn't you wake me up?" Bellamy all but growled. "You could have at least woken me up in time to get to Mount Weather before nightfall."

Clarke crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back in her chair. "Two reasons. Firstly, and most importantly, you desperately needed sleep. You're no good to anyone half-dead from sleep deprivation. I won't pretend to know how it is for you at Camp Jaha, but I do know that you need to take your own damn advice and not die out of stupidity or, more specifically in your case, stubbornness. Actually, they're kind of the same thing now that I think about it."

An irrational wave of anger welled up inside his chest. It was irrational because he knew Clarke was right, but he didn't want her to be. He didn't want her to take care of him. He'd gotten used to hefting around the weight of 44 lives on his shoulders solo and if she wasn't coming back - which she had made abundantly clear she wasn't - he didn't want to start relying on her again. He wouldn't.

He opened his mouth to angrily respond, but she cut him off. "Secondly, Jasper needs time. While you were sleeping the day away, I went back to Mount Weather to check on him." She scowled at Bellamy's incredulous look. "I didn't stop caring just because I left," she snapped.

Part of Bellamy wanted to snap back, to tell her she'd forfeited her right to care the day she'd walked away from them - from _him_ \- but then he remembered why she'd left and knew she had more right to care than just about anyone.

"I'm no good for them in Camp Jaha, Bellamy," Clarke continued, her tone softening, eyes hardening, "but _this_ I can do and _this_ I know. Jasper needs as much time and space as you can spare. I know it won't be easy, that he's supposed to be in camp, but please trust me on this. He's much less of a danger to himself at Mount Weather than he is at Camp Jaha."

Bellamy absorbed Clarke's familiar look of determination and fire - that captivating mix he'd come to associate exclusively with her - and realized he hadn't seen her look so much like her usual self since the night she'd marched into the Grounder's camp and stuck a knife through Finn's ribs. That more than anything convinced him to leave Jasper in her care.

"I trust you," he said, because trust had never been an issue with her, not even when he'd hated her. From the beginning Clarke had always done what she thought best for the survival of her people, and even though she seemed determined to keep herself separate from them, even though she had tried to run, nothing could break the bond the 100 had formed when they'd fallen from the sky together.

"I'll figure something out at camp," he promised, reaffirming his commitment to carrying that burden for her, his lingering resentment for her abandonment fading away before the strength of his relief. Clarke - his Clarke, the one who'd lead with strength of conviction and emotion, not the hard shell she'd fashioned herself to be - was not gone from him yet, and just like he refused to give up on Jasper, he refused to give up on her. She may never come back to them fully, but he'd make damn sure she'd never leave again.

* * *

Clarke could hardly keep her eyes off the hard breadth of Bellamy's shoulders and the way the cool evening breeze casually tousled his dark hair in the shards of moonlight that escaped the trees' censure. He was a picture of strength and silence and grace as his feet expertly navigated the forest floor. Her fingers itched to draw him, as they had done all the other times she'd seen him close enough to make out the details of his creased shirt and dirt-covered boots.

She remembered the time she'd first seen him so close. It had been almost two weeks into her observation of Camp Jaha, before she'd known when to expect his presence in the trees. It hadn't been her only brush with detection, but it had been her closest. She'd seen him twice before at that point, but there was almost four hours of forest between here and Camp Jaha and chances of a running into him were slim.

The first time, she'd been tracking a buck, big enough to feed her for a fortnight, and had been about to take the kill shot when the buck had collapsed to its side, a knife rising from the flesh of its neck. She had retreated to a safer distance and concealed herself behind a wide tree, waiting as the crunch of boots grew closer, dreading what they would reveal.

She had not expected Bellamy Blake. Then again, he'd always had a habit of surprising her, so perhaps it made sense that it had been him who'd confidently strode out of the trees. At that moment, however, she'd been too shocked and terrified to do anything but watch as he'd inspected his kill then hefted the creature onto his shoulders and walked away. Shocked because she had not had the time to prepare herself for such an encounter; terrified because of what she'd felt when she laid eyes on his sure form. She was only glad she'd been far enough away that he would have had to be looking for her to spot her, glad that the sun had been hiding behind grey clouds and thus could not turn her hair into a shining gold beacon.

She'd started camouflaging herself after that.

The second time she'd almost been detected was when she'd heard a single pair of boots tread near the hatch to the Bunker. She had waited, barely drawing breath, until they had passed her by and not come back that way in the hours following. He'd only had to pause for a moment and, on a careless whim, decide to open the hatch and she would have been found out. But he hadn't and if he'd ever come by that way again, it hadn't been while she was in there.

Then she'd seen him by the river. She'd been on her way to wash her makeshift face and hair paint off, as she did at the end of every trip into the forest, when she'd seen him crouched by the water, rifle casually slung over his shoulder, filling his bottle in the shallows. Acting on pure instinct, she'd silently swung up into the nearest tree just as Indra had taught her, making so little sound that her journey had only warranted a brief look and a small frown of confusion from Bellamy before he'd relaxed enough to take a long drink from his bottle. Confident he'd decided she was nothing but a small tree-inhabiting animal, Clarke had, for the first time, been able to relax enough to study him properly. It was then she'd first noticed the marks of exhaustion on his face and the invisible weight that seemed to drag down his shoulders. He'd looked like a man with too much on his mind and none of it light. He hadn't looked much like the Bellamy who'd teased her with knowing half-smiles and exasperated her with mischievous eyes.

He'd looked like a man who was bearing the weight of what she'd left behind.

After a night of restless sleep and dark dreams she'd forbidden herself from thinking about him unless she absolutely had to - in other words, unless he was right before her eyes. So she'd seen him a lot more over the next three weeks as he'd mapped terrain with a black pen on a worn-looking piece of leather parchment, never going further north or east than the land site, using that as his home-away-from-home, where he skinned and cooked his catches, which ranged from deer to rabbit to fish. The week after that she'd stopped painting her hair black with mud.

The week after that - today - he found her and she hadn't been all that surprised.

She didn't like the silence between them now, as necessary as it was in the dark world around them - their ears had to make up for their lack of sight, after all - but it was too quiet. It gave her too much time to think of the little black box of secrets housed in the back of her mind that contained the thoughts and feelings she did not allow herself to think or feel. She was working on her naturally nonexistent ability to compartmentalize. One day she hoped that the easy things and the secret things could coexist, that she could choose when to think of what, but for now the secret things bled into the easy things unless she kept them locked away. So she thought only of the easy things, of making sure she had enough water, and food to last the week, and herbs to dress the cuts she always seemed to acquire.

Bellamy could so easily become a secret thing and she did not want to lock him away, so she couldn't think of her uncovered hair and his face by candlelight. His shoulders and teasing smiles belonged in the black box, and she would think only of clean clothes against clean skin and the ability to defend herself without the use of a bow and arrow.

"Almost there." His voice was deep and gravelly from four hours of disuse. That could also go in the secret place, Clarke decided as she shivered in response.

"I know," she replied evenly, practiced.

He stopped and looked back at her, squinting through the patchy moonlight. "Are you sure you're okay to go back to the Bunker alone?"

Clarke laughed softly, measured. It wouldn't do to let it get carried away from her, like it had by the river. "It's a bit late for that now, don't you think?" she replied lightly.

"I did ask you back at the Bunker," Bellamy needlessly reminded her.

"Three times," Clarke needlessly reminded him.

"Only three times?" Bellamy replied, comically shocked. "I thought it was more like eight times."

"Let's average it at five."

"Six."

"Deal."

Clarke hid her genuine smile in the shadows of the trees. He made it so hard for her to keep it easy.

Bellamy sighed. "I don't even know why you insisted on coming. I'm just as capable as you of walking through this part of the forest at night alone."

"I know," Clarke replied simply, her tone giving nothing away. The answer to his confusion belonged in the black box, along with mind-numbing relief and hearing his voice crackling over a radio. "Keep walking, Bellamy."

"Bossy as always, Princess," he replied as he turned around.

"Shut up."

"Yes, Princess."

She could hear the challenging sarcasm in his voice and clamped down on the need to do one better. She was always at her best and worst with him.

Twenty easy minutes later Clarke made out the bluish glow of Camp Jaha through the trees. Bellamy stopped before her and she stepped up alongside him as they surveyed the light together.

"Well, this is me," he said lightly, turning towards her.

"So it is," Clarke replied, allowing herself to face him, taking careful note of the foot of space between them.

"You'll let me know if anything happens with Jasper?" Bellamy asked, his voice full of concern.

"I'll figure out a way to reach you if it comes to that, but I'm confident it won't." Because she wouldn't let it.

"Great, so I guess I'll see you next time I'm out?"

She hated that he phrased it as a question, giving her room to wiggle out of their agreement. She would if she thought about it for too long, if it became something other than easy. "With a new shirt."

"And maybe some pants."

"Definitely pants."

Bellamy smiled in response and silence fell over them, filling the space between them. Clarke didn't like having to think so much about what to do or say with him, and she especially didn't like that the act of moving her body away from him was completely beyond her. The moment stretched, both of them refusing to let it go. She could feel his eyes on her, but she refused to move hers from the ground between their feet, not when the memory of their last goodbye was playing out behind them on repeat.

 _Get back in the box, you,_ she thought fiercely. Silence was deadly. She needed to move, but she also needed to say something first. She wasn't going to end this surreal and wonderful and terrifying day with 'definitely pants.' Even she had more self-respect than _that_.

She finally looked up to meet his dark eyes that flashed in a sliver of moonlight. Damn, she needed breath in order to speak.

Bellamy drew in a deep breath and his gaze hardened with resolve. "Fuck it," he said before his arms shot out like bolts of lightning and she was captured in the furnace of his embrace. Her black box worked overtime as she tried not to feel his heart beat against her neck. Her hands pressed against the firmness of him as his hand gripped the back of her head, longer calloused fingers threading through her hair.

"I can't pretend it's not damn good to see you, Clarke," he said defiantly. "I won't," he promised.

Clarke could not make that same promise, but she could allow herself a moment, just a moment, to feel the same way.

Her body relaxed as she snaked her arms around his narrow waist and his grip tightened as she pressed her cheek into one of the broad shoulders she'd only just been telling herself not to think about. His warmth seeped into her and she was lost and he felt like home. That was the thought that brought her back to herself. He would not, could not, be home.

She closed her eyes and gave herself three seconds to catalog the feel of his breath against the top of her head, of his chin resting against her hair, of his hand flexing against her back. She had no time to commit to memory the texture of the shirt grasped in her hands or the way the smooth planes of her stomach shifted against the hard ridges of his. Reluctantly, she stepped out of his comfort and stood resolutely apart, letting the cool breeze define the space between them. Then she watched as he turned and walked away, because it was her turn.

* * *

It was only force of habit that got Bellamy through Raven's Gate undetected and to his tent to drop his pack off. He was certainly too busy trying to determine what emotion he was feeling as he stumbled to the Ark to see Chancellor Griffin approach him the moment he walked through the main entrance.

"Bellamy, you're a hard man to track down," the Chancellor said by way of greeting.

Bellamy firmly pushed all thoughts of emotions aside. "So I've been told, Chancellor."

The Chancellor eyed him with thinly veiled suspicion. "How curious, considering the size of Camp Jaha. There are only so many places to go."

Of course it had to be today of all days that the Chancellor was looking for him. "I never stay in one place long."

"So it seems, at least according to half the 44 that swore you'd helped them with some task or other today."

Bless those rascals. None of them would have had any idea where he'd been, but they'd still trusted him and covered his ass anyway. It almost made him feel guilty for hiding the truth of his whereabouts from them. Almost.

"Well, you have me now, Chancellor," Bellamy said in response, hoping to move on. "What can I do for you?"

"Step into my office," the Chancellor said and he mutely followed her to the med bay. When the Chancellor wasn't walking the Camp, she was in the med bay.

Once she ensured they had some semblance of privacy, the Chancellor turned to him. "I thought you'd like to know that the Council and I discussed your proposals and have come to an agreement."

Bellamy wasn't often surprised, so he found it difficult to hide now. He'd thought they'd be squabbling about him for weeks. "I'm glad to hear it."

"I've spoken to Raven, Wick and Monty. Raven and Wick are going to make a trip up to Mount Weather tomorrow to determine what they need to bring from the camp to fix the turbines and how many supplies they'll need to last them as long as it'll take to do it. Wick will accompany Raven, since he wouldn't hear of her being sent there alone."

That sounded about right.

"Monty will take over all general maintenance of the camp during this time, so he will be taken off all other rostered work, including hunting and gathering shifts."

"That's a smart move. The kid's genius is wasted on picking berries from bushes."

The Chancellor smiled wryly. "Genius does not come into it. Both Raven and Monty assure me that maintenance is mind-numbing work. I'll have to take their word on that."

One side of Bellamy's mouth lifted slightly in what could almost be called a smile. "To them, it probably is. Monty's at his most brilliant when it comes to tech. I suggest giving him permission to inspect the Ark's systems. He might just find a way to make them last longer, and be more efficient at that."

The Chancellor nodded. "I'll be sure to do that, Bellamy."

The way she said his name, with weight and meaning, made him shift in discomfort. He wanted nothing more than to leave. "Is that all you needed, Chancellor?"

She smiled knowingly but kindly, as if she saw through his carefully polite words. He didn't like that either. He didn't want to be understood by her, but he was afraid she did. He didn't want to like her either, but he was afraid he would if given the chance. He didn't trust her enough yet to risk it.

"Just one more thing, Bellamy. It's about survival training."

* * *

Octavia ran up to him as soon as he left the med bay. He could not find it within himself to be surprised. He'd surpassed his quota for the day.

"Bellamy!" she flung her arms around him.

"Way to announce I've been missing for almost twenty hours, O."

"Sorry," she winced as she withdrew from him. "I was worried."

He looked down at her fondly. "I know. Let's go back to my tent and I'll fill you in."

Once there, she wasted no time before grilling him.

"Where were you? Did you find Jasper? What took you so long? Where is he? You didn't find him, did you? What are we going to do, Bellamy?"

Bellamy put his hands up in an attempt to stop what was already becoming an endless flow of questions. "Hold up, hold up!" he said, laughing. "Give me a second to answer."

Octavia stopped abruptly and blinked at him. Then she blinked some more. She looked unfathomably shocked. He didn't waste the uncharacteristic silence.

"Jasper is at Mount Weather."

That shook her out of her stupor. " _Mount Weather_? What? Why?"

Bellamy shrugged. "I don't know for sure, I didn't speak to him, but it seems he just needs some space to deal with some stuff."

Octavia gaped at him incredulously. "You just left him there without even talking to him? How could you possibly know he's fine?"

Bellamy rubbed the back of his neck as he tried to think of a way to explain it to her without giving away the fact he hadn't actually seen Jasper at all. "Look, he obviously wants to be alone. That's why he left. What would be the point in my forcing him to come back here? He was fine. He wasn't depressed, wasn't suicidal. He seemed..." What was the word Clarke had used? "...determined."

"What, determined to kill himself?" Octavia scoffed. Bellamy tried not to smile at hearing his own words tossed back at him.

"Determined like...he had a purpose, like he was there for a reason. A good reason," he added, embellishing on Clarke's words for Octavia's peace of mind.

He trusted Clarke and knew that, despite everything, Octavia did too, but he'd promised to keep her secret and she trusted him, so he would. It was that simple. If that meant lying a little to Octavia to keep it, then he would lie a little.

"Trust me, O. He's fine. Besides, he won't be there alone for much longer. The Chancellor told me Raven and Wick are being sent to Mount Weather to work on the turbines."

Octavia's expression changed from thunderous to one of delighted surprise. "You mean they actually _listened_ to you?"

Bellamy smiled. "Yeah, my reaction was about the same as yours."

"This works out perfectly, Bell!" Octavia exclaimed excitedly. "You can get Raven to say Jasper has been there today as well, that she sent him after she found out she was going so he could take some extra equipment or something! I mean, it's not a completely unbelievable idea. Jasper has helped Raven with her mechanics loads of times - honestly, it was the only thing keeping him somewhat sane - he trusts her, and it's just like Raven to be completely absentminded and send him up there without telling anyone. Everyone knows what she gets like when she's focused on a project."

Bellamy's smile grew and he kissed her on the forehead. "You're a genius, O."

Octavia stepped back, a look of utter confusion on her face. "Okay, what the fuck is wrong with you?"

Now it was his turn to look confused. "What are you talking about?"

"You've smiled three times. _Three times_. And you _laughed_."

"So? Everyone laughs."

"You don't laugh, Bellamy, you brood. You skulk around the place with a rain cloud over your head and the promise of murder to anyone who gets in your way. You don't laugh and you sure as hell don't kiss my forehead just for being clever!"

"Sure I do."

"I'm clever all the time, and this is the first time you've kissed me on the forehead for it since we left the land site!" Octavia insisted emphatically.

"I know I've kissed you on the forehead since then." He paused and shook his head in disbelief. "This has to be the stupidest conversation I've ever had," he said more to himself than Octavia, which was just as well since she ignored him, as always.

"The only times you've kissed me on the forehead since then were because we were separated and you thought I was dead and you were happy I was alive. That is a _big_ step away from a you've-been-clever-I'm-proud-of-you kiss on the forehead!"

"I didn't know you counted. I didn't know there were _types_ ," Bellamy argued, beyond the point of reason now.

"Yes, there _were_ types, Bellamy! There haven't been types since..."

From her stricken look, Bellamy knew she'd been about to say _since Clarke left_. He merely raised an eyebrow for her to continue. She looked even more stricken. Disturbed, even.

"Something's happened, Bellamy. Tell me."

Trust Octavia to make a big deal out of nothing and actually manage to hit the nail on the head while she did it.

"I'm in a good mood," he hedged.

Her eyes narrowed. "Why."

Bellamy rummaged around the puddle of goo Octavia had turned his brain into for a suitable answer. His gaze settled on the knife he used to skin whatever game he caught. "I'm in a good mood because Chancellor Griffin not only told me she was instigating Operation Mount Weather..."

"That's a dumb name. It should be 'The Weather Project' or, better yet, 'Changing the Weather'."

He quelled her with a look - he was definitely not responding to _that_ \- before continuing. "She also told me the Council had talked about my idea-"

"Our idea."

"Our idea of training up the civilians to survive out in the forest."

"And?"

" _And_ she's appointed me head of the undertaking." He ignored Octavia's incredulous expression and tried to look happier about the news than he really was. There were too many other things to be happy about that day for this one to be at the top of the list. "They're only making it voluntary for the moment, so I've got to go around and talk to people about it, organize a time for all of the volunteers to go out into the forest, that kind of thing."

Octavia managed to close her gaping mouth. "That's a big fucking deal, Bell."

He smiled wryly. "And a big fucking load of work, to add to my other big fucking loads of work."

"Surely they're reducing your other duties."

"Taking me off Guard duty on the wall, for starters," Bellamy said with a shrug at Octavia's raised eyebrow. "That was a colossal waste of my time anyway, so I'm not too cut up about it."

"Yeah, but it gave you an in with the other Guards. We might need their trigger fingers a little heavy one day. And maybe they'd be less likely to rat on you to Major Byrne when they inevitably catch you sneaking out."

Bellamy ignored that last jab. "I'm still a Sergeant, just one who doesn't have to pull shitty wall shifts."

Octavia smiled. "Well, alright then! This is good, this is good. Did she say anything about Linc?"

"Only that he has the Council's permission to accompany us on our excursions, but that she suggests I wait until people are comfortable with the idea of going outside the camp at all before I introduce Lincoln into it."

Octavia scowled. "That's rubbish! He's everyone's best chance at survival out there."

"I know that, O," Bellamy said, placating her, "but for now I just need to get people used to the idea of going out into the forest. They're going to be skittish about it if a man they don't understand is coming along. I know Linc's value as much as you do, and so does the Chancellor."

Octavia eyed him skeptically.

"It's true, O."

Octavia shrugged it off. "Whatever, I'm just glad they're actually taking some steps in the right direction, however small."

"It's a good start."

"Is is," Octavia agreed before shaking her head in disbelief. "Jasper at Mount Weather, the Council actually agreeing with us, you laughing and kissing foreheads and being given real responsibility? This has been a strange fucking day."

"It really has," Bellamy said as he laughed out loud, causing Octavia to narrow her eyes at him again. If only she knew.

* * *

Raven sat patiently - or at least with what she hoped was a patient expression - as Wick described his latest masterpiece to her. Theoretical masterpiece. He'd need one of his ideas to actually work before it could be considered a masterpiece. And he needed _her_ for that idea to have any chance of working, so really it wouldn't be solely his masterpiece at all. It would be _theirs_ , and she had no inclination of attaching her good name alongside his, and especially not to something as idiotic as _hover bikes_.

"There is absolutely _nothing_ you can say that would come within even a _shadow_ of a hope of convincing me to devote _any_ of my _extremely_ valuable time towards this," she stated resolutely. Because _hover bikes_.

"But just look at how beautiful it would be!" Wick exclaimed excitedly as he laid out the detailed drawings on the table before her.

"Beautiful is one interpretation. Useless is mine."

Seriously, how did he even have the time to put this together? She needed to make him do more things for her, like crawl through the vents to fix a perfectly working switchboard. Then turn the cooling system on while he was in there so his dick would shrivel into his pelvis and he'd be too embarrassed to pester her for sex. She'd get so much more work done if he wasn't constantly putting his big, annoying self in her way all the time, distracting her with his pleading blue eyes. Disgusting.

"I have more important things to be doing right now than looking at these laughable scrawls."

"Scrawls!"

She ignored him. "For example, we're supposed to be leaving for Mount Weather tomorrow morning - _morning_ ," she emphasized when Wick rolled his eyes, "and no, midday is _not_ morning - and we're only half packed. You do realize it takes, like, eight hours to get there?"

"Which is exactly why we need hover bikes!" Wick replied triumphantly. "Besides, I don't want to be hauling your crippled ass back and forth from Mount Weather for the next however many months."

"No one asked you to, jackass," Raven replied, eyes flashing.

"Someone's gotta do it, and fortunately my healthy ego can handle the embarrassment of being seen with you," Wick said as he smiled innocently at her.

Raven pouted her lips and put a hand on her chest. "Aw, Wick, you say the sweetest things."

"Kyle."

Raven smiled mischievously at him as he leaned over her, bracing his arms on either side of her chair. "I'm sorry, who?"

His smile shifted from mischievous to sultry. Her breath caught. His voice dropped. "I told you to call me Kyle."

Raven kept her tone forcibly light as she replied, "Oh, I remember now. Sorry, but you're only Kyle when I'm about to die."

He wasn't deterred and leaned closer still, his lips only inches from hers. "Or when I do that thing with my tongue, or when I'm moving in-"

The door opened and they jumped apart.

Raven turned to see Bellamy's head poking through the gap, the expression on his face both amused and faintly terrified. So the story of her throwing at wrench at the last person who hadn't knocked had reached Bellamy, huh?

"Am I interrupting something?" he asked, amusement winning out.

"Yes." "No."

Raven and Wick glared at each other. "Listen to me, Blake. It's definitely in your longevity's best interests," Raven ordered without taking her eyes from Wick's.

Wick conceded with a knowing smile and turned away, but not before mouthing _next time_. Damn but if that ridiculous man didn't turn her on.

"Okay..." Bellamy said uncertainly as he slowly slid into the room and shut the door behind him. "I need a favor."

Raven rolled her eyes and heard Wick snort from the other side of the room. They had a tally of how many times people came in to their workroom to ask them for a favor. Raven was leading by ten.

"Why does that sentence fill me with fear and dread?" Raven asked sarcastically as she turned her gaze onto Bellamy. "Oh, that's right! Because every time you ask me for a favor it's to blow something up! So, who has incurred the almighty wrath of Bellamy Blake this time?"

Bellamy's mouth twisted into a self-depreciating smile and Raven found herself momentarily stunned by it. Not because he had an amazing smile - that went without saying - but because she hadn't seen a smile like _that_ on his face in months. Not since...well, she knew what since. Everyone did. That didn't explain why she was seeing it _now_.

The smile turned to suspicion before her eyes. "What?" he demanded.

Her disbelief must have been showing on her face. Whoops. "You looked like you'd caught a case of happiness for a second there and I was a little worried."

Now it was Bellamy's turn to roll his eyes, also something she hadn't seen him do for a long time. She was surprised he even remembered how.

"Okay, now you're really scaring me, Blake. I feel like I should call Octavia. She'd know what to do."

The self-depreciating smile was back. Seriously, what was it doing there on that roguishly broody face? "Already seen her. She was stumped."

This was more serious than she'd thought. At least she knew Octavia would be onto the Curious Case of Bellamy Blake's Smile while she was stuck in Mount Weather trying to not build a hover bike. "Well, then you'd better hurry up and tell me what you want before you give me a heart attack. I'm essential personnel, don't you know."

"That's what I always tell you, baby!" Wick called from a distance not far enough away.

"Ignore him. He doesn't know how to be around people yet. I'm still training him."

"I'm just going to ask you for that favor now, before I leave here with more ick crawling over my skin than I know how to get rid of," Bellamy said, rightly disgusted.

"Please, do," Raven urged.

"I found Jasper," he started, but Raven crowed with delight before he could continue.

"Thank fuck! I never doubted you Blake." Another snort of laughter from the not-far-enough distance. "Okay, maybe for an hour or two there in the middle, but the ratio definitely favors not doubting you. How he is? _Where_ is he?"

"Mount Weather."

That stopped her short. "The fuck's he at Mount Weather for?"

"Language, baby!"

She needed her own workroom like five minutes ago.

"Go fuck yourself, Wick!"

"Only if you watch!"

Raven shuddered. "Okay, now I'm getting more ick than I know how to deal with and I can deal with a _lot_." Bellamy looked faintly nauseated. Raven determined he wasn't going to last much longer in here, so she resolutely pushed on. "Why's he there? Why didn't you bring him home?"

Bellamy got a distant, closed look on his face. There was more to this story than he was about to tell her, that was for sure.

"He needs some time away, to deal with...stuff."

"Mount Weather stuff?"

"I'd assume so."

"Sounds like someone else I know," Raven muttered under her breath. She hadn't meant for Bellamy to hear it, but knew he had by the strange, faraway expression he got on his face. That was definitely different. Usually if someone mentioned Clarke's absence, he got a closed, dark look on his face, so everyone had taken to just not mentioning her. Bellamy was already a level eight brooder and all feared the possibility of an actual thundercloud forming over his head if he reached level ten.

She and Octavia definitely needed to have words. Firm, speculative words.

"So what do you need from me?" Raven asked, as curious about Jasper as she was about Bellamy.

"Since I left him there, his absence needs to be explained away. I was thinking since you're going to Mouth Weather anyway..."

"I can just lie and say he was there with me the whole time."

Bellamy nodded. "Or that you sent him early with extra equipment."

"As far as favors go, this certainly isn't the worst I've been asked for. It probably even makes the top three best favor requests."

Bellamy smiled again. Dear God, when would it stop. "Then let's not call it a favor and I won't have to owe you one."

Raven huffed with reluctant amusement. "You already owe me, like, twenty so yeah, okay, let's do that."

"Thanks, Reyes. Remember, keep it natural. Don't offer the information, just wait until someone asks you."

Raven rolled her eyes and waved his concern away. "Shove off, Bellamy. I am a master bullshitter. I am so good that this guy," she said with a point of her thumb in Wick's general direction, "actually thinks I _like_ him. I mean, can you imagine?"

"You shouldn't doubt her, Bellamy," Wick called over. "She's so committed that last night, she did this thing where-"

"Leaving now."

"Please."

* * *

When Bellamy laid his head on his pillow around midnight, he'd felt as if he'd crammed an entire day within the two hours he'd been back from the forest. From Clarke.

His mind turned to the feel of her body in his arms before he forcibly pushed it aside. He wouldn't think of that. Not yet.

He thought about Jasper instead, about how ridiculous it was that the kid needed to break out of the camp just to get a little space, that _he_ had to break out of the camp to get a little space. That the term 'breaking out' was used at all. Was this place a camp or a prison? It had started feeling a lot more like the latter lately. He could hardly blame Clarke for not wanting to come back.

 _Not yet._

He got that the leadership just wanted to keep everyone safe, but where were the limits? They were not children to be kept in a playpen. They needed to learn out to live outside, in the real world. Half of the people on the ground behaved as though they were still on the Ark, that they'd die the second they stepped foot outside their safe little walls. Granted, having a army of thousands parked outside your front gate wouldn't have made a great impression, but the Grounders had been gone for five months. That was a lifetime down here. Before then he'd thought it impossible to ever feel safe at all, but he had moments of it now and they were terrifying because he was certain that it was false, just his fatigued mind trying to convince his equally-fatigued body that they could relax now. Perhaps he was paranoid, but at least he wouldn't be dead.

He had to train up as many people as he could before they got dead, because they would. As sure as the sun would rise tomorrow morning, the people who were too afraid to step outside the camp would be the people who wouldn't last through the next year, because something was coming. Something always came, and the longer time went without it, the worst he figured that thing would be.

He was both surprised and pleased that the Council had at least acknowledged that reality, but the pace they set moving forward chafed at him. He longed for the day he'd be able to leave camp as he pleased, openly, without having to worry about being shot in the darkness or locked away from his people. He knew what he did was a risk, but it was as necessary as it was selfish. He would be crushed under the weight of all he had done, all he had seen and all he continued to do if he was not able to get away from under it every once in a while. Like Atlas with the world on his shoulders, just with a convenient but temporary out-clause. And now he had even more of a reason to use it.

 _Clarke._

He didn't know where to begin thinking about her, if he could stop once he'd started. The past day with her felt like a dream, and not because he'd spent the majority of it asleep. He couldn't wait to get back out there, shirt and pants - and hell, maybe even a jacket - in tow, just to make sure she'd been real, that he hadn't been stung by a poisonous insect and actually spent the whole day passed out on the ground. Even as he thought that he knew it was ridiculous, because he remembered how she smelled. That sounded creepy as fuck, but Clarke had always had a particular clean scent to her, refreshing and subtle. Raven smelled like oil and grease, Octavia smelled like grass and dirt, and Clarke smelled like air and water. That didn't even make any fucking sense, but there it was. He'd forgotten that, and now he remembered, so she must have been real.

And if she wasn't then Jasper was likely dead in a ditch somewhere, so he, for once, chose the more optimistic option.

Besides, he'd hugged her and it felt exactly like it always had, but more too. There'd always been a sense of _rightness_ about the way Clarke had fit in his arms and now it was that but also...like he'd never wanted to let go. He probably wouldn't have if she hadn't stepped back. It wasn't just that he'd known he wouldn't be able to watch her walk away again, not really knowing if he'd see her again - _again_. That was why he'd hugged her, not why he hadn't wanted to let go.

The reasons he'd not wanted to let go before had been different. The first time - when she'd almost knocked him off his feet - he'd been in a state of shock and didn't even know what the hell he'd been doing. The second time, he really _hadn't_ known if he would see her again. There'd been no promises, no 'definitely pants.' It'd been 'may we meet again' and everyone knew that was said when you really didn't think you would.

This time, he knew he would see Clarke again. He just hadn't wanted to let go.


End file.
